There is no future without middle classes

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he middle class was not a recurring theme in international public debate until we understood the dimension of the financial and economic collapse initiated by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Since then, the number of experts paying attention to it has grown. And there are not a few who have taken it upon themselves to vociferate to the four cardinal points that the middle class has died or is about to do so. There are those who do not go that far, although they do highlight the list of innumerable problems this class faces. Christine Lagarde has warned on numerous occasions of the profound "crisis of the middle classes in advanced economies" and of the need to find solutions to alleviate its effects. As director of the International Monetary Fund, she maintained a few months ago that disillusionment with the future, lack of work, slow growth of the economies involved, growing inequality, and lack of transparency had fueled the decline of the middle class.

MIDDLE CLASS AND THE 2008 CRISIS. A report published by the Pew Research Center think tank highlighted that in some European countries, such as Spain, Germany, or Finland, the middle class had been one of the main victims of the economic crisis. According to this study, the Spanish middle class, which had represented almost 70% of households in the early nineties, had shrunk by seven percentage points in 2013. And these calculations could even be lowered. A monograph by the BBVA Foundation and the Valencian Institute of Economic Research established that the middle class accounts for 52% of the Spanish population. According to this research, more than three million Spaniards had been displaced from the middle zone of income distribution. But the phenomenon also crosses European borders. The American middle class has been severely affected, and it is one of the key aspects of public debate in the United States. In fact, the Obama Administration was forced to create a task force, in which several federal agencies participated, to respond to the problems of the middle class. The results were not as expected and, currently, President Trump continues to promise a huge tax cut to alleviate the situation of the middle class.

AMBIGUOUS DEFINITION. However, what do we mean when we say middle class? Perhaps we should start by using the plural, as is common in French usage, due to the extreme diversity of this social group. And it is that, despite the hundreds of definitions proposed by sociologists, economists or historians, we still do not adequately delimit the concept. The object, therefore, is fragile and complex. What do the middle classes have in common? Some give preference to economic income, others to consumption, and there are those who focus on specifying the traits of a sociocultural identity. Probably everyone is somewhat right, because these dimensions are interrelated and inseparable. In the end, most experts choose the easy and ambivalent path: the middle class would be that which is between the upper and lower classes.

In Spain, the middle class is considered to be made up of successful professionals, ranging from civil servants, small business owners, or permanent contract workers in factories. So much so that "we are all middle class" became a common adage, although today it is in decline. The same would happen if we toured the rest of the eurozone. In this way, a strong but too generic and fragile identity is favored, from which it is impossible to extract a common denominator. There are authors like Branko Milanović who believe that one cannot speak of a global middle class, given the strong regional and national variations. And it is that, without leaving Europe, the salary difference between the members of this group is up to 30,000 euros in average incomes. If we emphasize the field of income, we will fall into a definition that is too mechanical and diffuse. The phenomenon is not new. Throughout the 19th century, when there was still talk of a small and middle bourgeoisie, artisans were a paradigmatic example. By capacity for ascent and property, they should have fit into the middle class which, in the Spain of that time, represented a scarce 5% made up of public officials, teachers, doctors, engineers, or landlords. However, artisans did not want to belong to the club because what makes individuals middle class is that they want to be. Middle classes exist as a group at a level of representation that believes it shares a way of seeing the world and interpreting reality, even if we know that the diversity of this group makes it impossible to objectively delimit what these values, attitudes, and lifestyle are. Self-identification, therefore, will be the main interpretive key, although it is a definition of a somewhat liquid consistency.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. The world as we know it is a consequence of the rise of the middle classes, a phenomenon that refuted Karl Marx's dreams of their early disappearance. As historian Jürgen Kocka pointed out, the middle class took control of bourgeois culture and was thus able to champion the fight for these ideals. What were once no more than privileges within reach of the elites (such as the right to suffrage, education, or consumption) became universal, especially during the golden age of the middle class, what we know as the glorious thirty years. For this reason, Massimo Gaggi and Edoardo Narduzzi have argued that the end of the middle class would be the death knell for the social and political stability it represents.

After the devastating effects of World War II, the middle classes built the post-war demoliberal consensus until the oil crisis. The context was favorable as a consequence of demographic growth and welfare state policies, with the development of pensions, unemployment insurance, healthcare, and public education. Most workers became homeowners in those days, could travel during holidays, and, not least, consume. In Tony Judt's words, the welfare state was the creator of the middle class, and this group would be its main beneficiary and advocate. But the crisis hit hard in the seventies, and a slow retreat began.

In Spain, the process was different due to its particular sociopolitical context. The first impulse for the strengthening of a broad middle class was Francoist developmentalism, which meant it lagged behind the transformations that had begun decades earlier in neighboring countries. The arrival of democracy truly boosted the construction of the Spanish welfare state, while the emerging middle class looked to the European mirror. This consolidation occurred when the first serious problems of the system were already being felt in the rest of the continent. It is not difficult, therefore, to link the fragility currently observed in the Spanish middle class with the limitations of this late evolution.

Despite the prophets of doom, for many specialists the future will belong to the middle classes or it will not be. One of the greatest authorities in this field of study, economist Homi Kharas, has calculated that currently around 42% of the world's population could be classified as middle class. In global terms, we would be talking about some 3.2 billion people. But growth has not stalled. On the contrary, and always according to Kharas's foresight: in a few years it will exceed 50% of the world's population. The main reason for this advance will be the growth of the middle classes in developing countries, which will already have a global character. In fact, while annual growth in European countries stands at a minimum of 0.5%, in places like China or India it is growing at 6%. There is no doubt that this new middle class will become a transcendental agent of social change in the coming decades.

UNCERTAINTIES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS. Other scholars are not so optimistic. In The End of the Middle Class (2014), Tyler Cowen considers that we are heading towards social and economic impoverishment as a consequence of technological impact. Cowen calculates that there will be 10-20% of households where people will live comfortably and 80% who will have to fight for their subsistence. From this perspective, it seems that the digital revolution we are experiencing will be devastating for the interests of the middle class. Although there are dissenting voices, some authors estimate the destruction of jobs in the short and medium term at 50% as a consequence of the development of disruptive technology. Again, the middle class appears at the center of the target as the main protagonist of the crisis. Technopessimism has many cards in its favor, but it forgets other central dimensions such as the existence of labor regulation that will help us mitigate the negative effects that this process entails.

However, it is too rash to announce the death of the middle class. It will not die, but it will have to transform to respond to the challenges sent to it by the globalized world. For Moisés Naím, one of the main conflicts of the future will take place in the field of frustrated expectations, both of the middle classes that are declining in rich countries and of those that are growing in poor countries. And the middle class in Europe is not going to disappear. In fact, it has weathered the crisis much better than the lower classes, who have been the main victims of this economic lethargy. The middle class will have to resolve, first, the identity crisis in which it is immersed. The dreams of yesteryear have proven to be chimeras. Hence, the optimism of the golden years has become a common feeling of vulnerability and distrust. The question is how to channel these problems through reformist programs that improve the health of our political institutions, help mitigate social inequalities, and respond to the main concerns of middle classes that, to date, have always been the guarantee of democratic stability against the risk of polarization.